APDL FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
This page contains the answers to the most frequently asked questions about APDL For more details see the About APDL page
What is this website?
This website was set up to collate and preserve the work of David Holden who sadly passed away in May 2014. For over 25 years David ran APDL, the Archimedes Public Domain Library. APDL developed software for Acorn computers and specifically for computers running RISC OS. Everything on this site is for RISC OS and won't work on any other operating systems without using an emulator.
David's death left a big hole in the RISC OS world. Over the years APDL had expanded and purchased rights to hundreds of RISC OS applications. He also developed a large range of hardware, from replacement processor cards to IDE interfaces. If you wanted a replacement CMOS battery, or a new mouse ball it was APDL who could supply it. Without David the entire APDL operation just stopped overnight.
APDL was just PD, wasn't it?
Over the years David Holden obtained rights to a great many commercial software packages, many of these titles would have vanished otherwise. Beebug, Clares, Fourth Dimension, iSV Products, ProAction and many other names became a part of APDL.
David didn't just buy in products, he continued to develop them. He added new features, fixed bugs and converted older applications to run on newer versions of RISC OS. A good deal of the commercial 32bit RISC OS software owes its existence to David. Check out the brief history of APDL for more information.
I bought something from APDL, will you honor the warranty ?
(Yes, I really got asked this - Aaron) It's 12 years since David died, so any guarantee/warranty has long ago expired and even if it hadn't we have no sales information from APDL.
What's happened to APDL's software?
With the help and support of David's family we have now recovered all of the APDL development machines. This has allowed us to secure the source code to the entire APDL software catalogue.
So what's happening?
The plan is to make all of the APDL software titles available for download from this website but the process has consumed a lot more resources than we had originally envisaged with the result that it's taken far longer than we expected.
When will everything be available?
It's going to take time for us to sort through all the APDL applications. We all have full time jobs and the preservation of APDL is taking a lot longer than we had hoped. Part of this extra time is due to the number of requests we have been handling.
Please don't ask when a particular application will be available, we will get to it as quickly as we are able. There is a vast amount of data to work through and we are not operating to a fixed timescale.
Can I get the APDL software I want somewhere else?
Everything from APDL is exclusively available from the this website and is supplied under licence from the copyright holder(s). It's possible that a dealer might have some APDL titles as physical old stock but they will be expensive where everything here is available to download free of charge.
What about 32bit upgrades?
Some older applications are only suitable for 26bit machines but APDL did convert a number of titles to be 32bit neutral. So where possible it's the 32bit versions that are available as these should run on all RISC OS devices. Each commercial product page includes a detailed compatability report for both 26bit and 32bit versions of RISC OS. The PD library is a different matter as most of the content there will require Aemulor to run on 32bit versions of RISC OS.
Can I ask a question?
Every query that we have to reply to takes time and that's time that could be spent on developing this site and releasing products. So please don't e-mail (or phone) us with questions as we have already lost a significant amount of time dealing with questions that weren't urgent and that would be resolved once the product concerned is available.
What about Technical Support?
We are sorry but we simply don't have the spare resources to offer technical support on any free of charge APDL products.
What about instruction manuals?
APDL sold printed instruction manuals for some of the products. These manuals are being re-designed and converted into PDFs and will be included in the downloads with the applications concerned.
Why did you pick the strange font for APDL?
We didn't. The APDL font, Letraset Victorian, was chosen by Dave Holden many years ago. For the first few years of APDL the font wasn't even available on RISC OS. Whenever it appeared in APDL adverts or catalogues it actually was from a Letraset dry transfer sheet. These sheets are now very rare and sought after but when desktop publishing started to gain traction dry transfer lettering sheets became worthless. (I threw away hundreds of them in the early 1990s - Aaron)
Can I Help?
At the moment we have all the people we need assisting with the project.
What about APDL hardware?
We may make further announcements about the range of APDL hardware once the software side has been completed.
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